A8 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2019 LATIMES.COM
grimmest aspects of U.S. immigra-
tion policy — the deaths of those
who are trying to cross the border
illegally. The volunteers fill and
maintain more than 100 water
stations scattered along the sun-
bleached California borderlands.
The Hunters’ journeys into the
desert are one of the main reasons
their marriage has survived the
dramatic collision of emotions
that the 45th American president
inspires in each of them. They love
each other — but the last 2½ years
have tested them.
“We both have strong feelings
for each other, but also I have a
strong character and he does too,”
Laura said. “This situation with
Trump hasn’t helped.” John said
he doesn’t see a conflict between
his desire to save the lives of peo-
ple who are trying to cross the
border illegally and his support for
a president who has described the
same people as rapists, criminals
and gang members. “People were
dying during the Clinton era, in
the Bush era, in the Barack era,”
he said. “They are still dying in the
Trump era.”
And they still desperately need
water.
The couple met 19 years ago in
the low desert of Imperial County,
shortly after John had launched
his ambitious Water Station proj-
ect. He was, he said, apolitical on
the topic of illegal immigration.
The barrier promoted by his
brother had resulted in a decrease
in illegal immigration in the San
Ysidro area of San Diego, but
immigrants who were desperately
trying to cross the border were
pushed to the east, into unforgiv-
ing desert terrain. Thousands of
them have died in eastern Cali-
fornia and Arizona in the last 25
years.
Laura had read about the
venture in a local newspaper and
signed on as a volunteer. Their
political differences were immedi-
ately apparent, but they both
opposed abortion, and the water
stations, with their potential to
save lives, seemed to be an exten-
sion of that belief.
After a couple of years, their
friendship became something
more; they started dating and
eventually married.
John, 63, who is lanky and
wears muted, buttoned-down
shirts, has a voice with just a hint
of Jimmy Stewart’s Midwestern
accent. Laura, 72, favors bright
clothing, red lipstick and proudly
embraces the plume of silver-and-
black wavy hair that frames her
chiseled face.
He’s a toy inventor who earned
a doctorate in particle physics and
worked on satellite technology at
Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.
She’s a retired elementary
school teacher who raised three
girls — mostly on her own — along
the border regions of San Diego
and Mexicali, Mexico.
Their Escondido home is nota-
ble for its bright walls and Oaxa-
can pottery and paintings. Some
rooms could be easily confused for
a Mexican art museum.
They’ve been a couple for many
years, with established routines.
Sometimes he cooks crepes for her
on the weekend. She serves him
iced tea on hot days. Their chil-
dren — from different marriages —
are grown, and the couple dote on
Fifi, their Maltese poodle.
In their own way, the Hunters
reflect the diversity of the Water
Station group, which consists of
about 10 core volunteers who come
together twice a month in Ocotillo,
a tiny community in Imperial
County. A few are apolitical. At
least four — including John Hunt-
er — lean to the right. The rest —
mostly the younger ones — are
left-leaning activists.
“On this one topic — saving
lives in the desert — you could say
we are all liberals,” John said. “I
just consider it being normal.
When temps hit 115, people focus
on the basics of survival, and petty
differences are ignored.” From the
start, Duncan Hunter, 71, sup-
ported his brother’s water project
and even helped him obtain per-
mits to set up stations on land
operated by the Bureau of Land
Management.
There is no contradiction, he
says, between his support for his
brother’s mission to save immi-
grant lives and his desire for tough
border enforcement.
“The fact that you don’t have a
secure border leads to people
coming to the border and dying of
dehydration or exposure in the
desert,” the former congressman
said. “If you had 200 high school
kids a year drowning in a canal,
what would you do? You’d fence off
the canal.... You keep people from
dying.”b
Early on a June morning, Rob
Fryer, a retired chicken farmer and
computer engineer who lives in
Solana Beach, arrived at Laura
and John’s home to prepare for
another trek into the desert. Piling
into the Hunters’ truck, they drove
east to meet with about a dozen
volunteers at the Red Feather
Cafe in Ocotillo. Fifi came along
for the ride.When John first launched his
project, migrant deaths were on
the rise, hitting a peak of 96 in the
El Centro Sector — a 70-mile
stretch of border in the Imperial
Valley — in fiscal year 2001, accord-
ing to Border Patrol data. For a
time, fatalities declined in the
area, but last year, 17 people trying
to cross illegally died, and that had
the Hunters worried.
They had hoped to retire by
now, leaving the work in the hands
of a younger generation. But as
much as they’ve tried to break
away, the work pulls them back.
There just aren’t enough volun-
teers.
John doesn’t agree with Trump
about the need for more border
fencing. But he’s happy that the
president is tackling illegal immi-
gration. “Everyone else before him
has just passed the buck,” he said.
“He’s forcing people to address the
issue. Everyone loses when you
don’t talk about it.”
When pressed about the
Trump administration’s immigra-
tion policies and practices, such as
the squalid conditions at deten-
tion facilities along the U.S.-Mexi-
co border or the dismantling of the
asylum system, John says he
doesn’t know much about the
issues.
But he adds that he believes
the media are biased against
Trump, citing coverage of the
mass shootings at an El Paso
Walmart in August. And he credits
the president for the strong econo-
my.
“There has been so much
Trump hatred,” John said. “All of
what the left has done has actually
driven me the other way.”
Laura sees Trump as uncouth
and chauvinistic, and she blames
his rhetoric for the deaths in El
Paso.“I don’t like Trump, and it’s not
because of the media. It’s what
comes out of his mouth — all the
insults and ignorance,” she said. “I
want someone to be presidential
with a level head.”
Then she paused and took a
deep breath.
“This Trump stuff has been
negative on our marriage, big
time,” she said.b
After a short meeting at the
cafe in Ocotillo, the group broke
off into two teams. The Hunters
were joined by Fryer and John’s
30-year-old son, Johnny.
As John navigated the remote
and rocky terrain in Anza-Borrego
Desert State Park, large blue and
white barrels and 12 gallons of
water started to bounce up and
down in the back of the truck.
Morning temperatures had
already reached 90 degrees, rela-
tively pleasant for a place where
they can rise to 125. The truck
traversed a hardscrabble dirt road
past a sign that read: “FOOT
TRAVEL ONLY, NO VEHICLES.”
Twelve years ago the group
struck an agreement with the
park, which allows them to place
water stations in 14 separate loca-
tions.
While the water is mostly in-
tended for people clandestinely
crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, it
has been consumed by others,
John said, evidenced by thank-you
notes left by grateful hikers, off-
road enthusiasts and other non-
migrants who have found them-
selves in a bind.
Vandalism is common. Some-
times people shoot at the barrels
or dump the water. In Arizona,
there have been instances of Bor-der Patrol agents emptying or
kicking bottles of water intended
for people crossing the border. A
humanitarian worker’s hidden
camera captured video from 2010,
2012 and 2017 of agents in the act of
puncturing or kicking water bot-
tles.
Every mile, the Water Station
volunteers checked on the boxes of
water stored in blue barrels with
wooden lids, placing rocks on top
to keep the forceful winds from
blowing the lids away.
The volunteers didn’t talk
much as they wiped sweat from
their brows and gulped cold water.
At the end of the trail, they parked
their vehicles and walked about
half a mile to establish two new
stations.
Fryer and Brett Stalbaum each
carried a barrel. Paula Poole
carried a shovel. John and his son
hauled out a dolly stacked with
four boxes full of gallon jugs of
water. Laura carried Fifi.
In the late morning, they
started the drive toward home and
John talked about his next project:
trying to raise money to place cell
towers in an area near the Arizona
border that currently doesn’t have
service. Immigrant deaths there
have escalated as the California
border has been fortified.
Laura thinks it’s a good idea.
“I think the situation in the
desert or the mountains ... is not
about immigration. It’s about life
or death and we try to help a little
bit,” she said.
“Whatever we can do to stop
people from dying.”b
Sometimes the civility that
defines their volunteer work in the
desert dissipates when the Hunt-
ers are back at the house. During
one particularly heated moment,
the couple talked over each other,
and Laura Hunter said, sarcasti-
cally, “Now you are sounding like
Trump, sweetheart.”
“She doesn’t like my candi-
date,” John said.
Laura responded with a quip:
“Are you going to vote for someone
who insulted Mexicans? You have
a Mexican wife, John.”
Her husband made it a point to
remind her that he didn’t vote for
Trump in 2016 “because he didn’t
want to vote for someone who said
bad things about my wife.”
But this time around, he said,
he plans to vote for Trump.
Laura has other plans. “You
know what?” she said. “I’m going
to block his vote.”
John laughed.
“He is opinionated and so am
I,” Laura said. “I’m not an exten-
sion of him.... We have to agree to
disagree. We have to agree to get
along.”
And for the most part they do.
Nearly every Friday, they go out to
dinner — it’s usually Mexican food
— before heading to downtown
Escondido, where they watch
pre-1970s vintage cars slowly cruise
up and down Grand Avenue. John
fawns over Laura, calling her “my
dove” and opens the door for her
wherever they go. Laura is affec-
tionate, caressing John’s hand
during long drives.
They anticipate their next trip
to the desert, carting jugs of water
with the goal of saving lives, just as
they have for the last 19 years.
But days after the El Paso
shooting, after 22 people were
killed, they still hadn’t discussed
it.VOLUNTEERS, looking for signs of immigrants in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, fill and maintain more than 100 water stations in the California borderlands.
Photographs by Luis SincoLos Angeles TimesShared mission unites them; politics divide
[Water,from A1]
JOHN HUNTER marks a water station in the desert. He and his wife Laura, a Mexican immi-
grant, love each other, but “this Trump stuff has been negative on our marriage,” she says.‘He is opinionated and so am I. I’m not an
extension of him.... We have to agree to disagree.
We have to agree to get along.’
—LAURAHUNTER,on her political differences with her husband